Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2019 Jun;140:1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2019.03.007. Epub 2019 Mar 17.
Dynamic non-luminance-mediated changes in pupil diameter have frequently been shown to be a reliable index for the level of arousal, mental effort, and activity in the locus coeruleus, the brainstem's noradrenergic arousal center. While pupillometry has most commonly been used to assess the level of arousal in particular psychological states or the level of engagement in cognitive tasks, some recent studies have found a relationship between average resting-state (i.e. baseline) pupil sizes and individuals' working memory capacity (WMC), indicating that individuals with higher WMC on average have larger pupils than individuals with relatively lower WMC. In the present study, we measured pupil size continuously in 212 participants during rest (i.e. while fixating) and estimated WMC in all participants by administering the Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS) task from WAIS-III. We were unable to replicate the relation between average pupil size and WMC. However, the novel finding was that higher WMC was associated with higher variability in resting-state pupil size. The present results are relevant for the current debate on the role of noradrenergic activity on working memory capacity.
瞳孔直径的动态非亮度介导变化经常被证明是蓝斑（脑干去甲肾上腺素唤醒中心）唤醒水平、心理努力和活动的可靠指标。虽然瞳孔测量法最常用于评估特定心理状态下的唤醒水平或认知任务的参与程度，但最近的一些研究发现，平均静息状态（即基线）瞳孔大小与个体的工作记忆能力（WMC）之间存在关系，表明平均而言，WMC 较高的个体的瞳孔比 WMC 相对较低的个体的瞳孔大。在本研究中，我们在 212 名参与者休息时（即注视时）连续测量瞳孔大小，并通过 WAIS-III 中的字母数字排序（LNS）任务对所有参与者进行 WMC 估计。我们无法复制平均瞳孔大小和 WMC 之间的关系。然而，新的发现是，较高的 WMC 与静息状态瞳孔大小的变异性较高有关。本研究结果与当前关于去甲肾上腺素活性对工作记忆能力的作用的争论有关。
